We went out there this weekend to fill all of the protein and cottonseed feeders. We got our new 1,200lb Krivoman timed protein feeder set up so we now have two of the Krivoman timed feeders running. We started building our big a%* bow blind, built our quail feeder/watering station and did some strip disking to see if it will help promote any forb/grass growth. Everything is greening up out there, but it's still fairly dry so hopefully we get some rain soon. We are now gearing up for turkey season and filled up the turkey feeders. Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Thanks guys! We set the timed feeders to be open from 5am to 7am and 6pm to 8pm. We are doing this to help control the amount of protein feed the deer are eating, but we also have cottonseed available at all times from January through the End of August. The cottonseed is $230/ton, so it's around 1/2 the price of protein. I wish we could feed 20,000lbs of protein a year, but we can't afford that. Our goal is to feed around 12,000lbs of protein this year.

Here's a picture of one of our cottonseed feeders after one week of use. We had piled up the cottonseed so that you could barely see the top of the t-post and also put a pile of cottonseed between the cottonseed feeder and the Krivoman feeder.
Consumption for both cottonseed and protein has definitely slowed down over the past couple of weeks, which i'm assuming is due to everything greening up nicely out there. Hopefully we can all get some rain in the next week or so.

Looking good! I really like the quail feeding station. Please update as you can on it. Our wildlife exemption covers ground nesting birds and we are deciding which way to go on a quail feeder.

Thanks! I'll be out there April 7th through the 9th topping off protein/cottonseed feeders and doing some turkey hunting. I'll check the camera card on the quail feeder and post up some pictures. I'll also take some more detailed pictures of the quail feeder.

We went down to the ranch this past weekend to do some work and a little turkey hunting. Unfortunately, the birds weren't very vocal and every gobbler we saw had at least 4 hens with him so it was very hard to get them to come in. All of the cottonseed feeders were empty, which we filled 30 days ago. The Krivoman timed protein feeders are working great. We saw a bunch of rattlesnakes this weekend. In fact, my 3.5yr old son, nephew and mother in law were flying a kite and when my mother-in-law looked down, there was a 3.5ft rattlesnake about 5ft away from them. I was able to kill this one, but we saw 7 more rattlers that weekend. Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Here's a picture of our small plot. It's doing okay. There are a lot of weeds growing in it now:

All three cottonseed feeders full:

My nephew holding the rattlesnake:

We added three brush piles in the big pond to try to improve the habitat for the baitfish (i.e. bluegills). I would like to add some big trees in one or two different spots to help hold fish and improve the pond habitat, but getting these big trees out in 12 to 15ft of water is easier said than done:

Native Habitat/Open Field:

Creeks are still holding water:

Acacia blooming:

Quail feeder/Watering Station:
We put a trail camera in it and found that raccoons are getting in and knocking over the plastic "tee-pee" shaped cone part. May need to figure out how to keep the raccoons from getting in.

Small pond:

There was a nice thunderstorm that went through today, so I'm hoping we got at least 1/2in or more. So far, we have only received 0.8in for the month of April and we only got a little over 1in for the month of March. Here 's the cell that hit today, hopefully it produced a good amount:

Enjoy the updates, Great looking place Yal have. Anyway you could pull your larger trees from across the pond rather than push.

That's definitely a possibility, but we would need a very long chain or rope. It's about 60-70 yards across. I like the idea though. Trying to figure out how we can make it a great bass pond. It's about 20ft deep in the middle right now and about 30ft deep when full. I don't want to put too much brush in there, but we want the forage fish to be able to reproduce and get big so the Florida bass that we stocked five years ago continue to get bigger and bigger.

Personally, I had only seen one rattler in the past 5 years. My twin brother had seen several a couple turkey seasons ago. We have a snake wrangler go out there every year. Last year he caught around 25-30, this year he caught 15. Our house is on the top of the hill above the San Saba river and I'm sure there are a number of dens inside those rocky cliffs near the river. I'll definitely be going to academy to buy some snake boots/chaps for the kids.

I was gonna ask how your deer were hitting the protein. We are over by San Saba & mine emptied 600 in 2 weeks. They are hammering it & I have it closing at night. They are even hitting the corn as fast as it spins out. Would think with all the green they would slow down a little.

I was gonna ask how your deer were hitting the protein. We are over by San Saba & mine emptied 600 in 2 weeks. They are hammering it & I have it closing at night. They are even hitting the corn as fast as it spins out. Would think with all the green they would slow down a little.

Your place is looking GREAT! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks! Ya, the does are really starting to hammer it hard and getting ready to drop within the next month or so. I forgot to mention that our two protein feeders (1,500lb & 1,300lb) were both about 60% full and we filled them to the top two weeks ago.

We have gotten some decent rains this Spring, but nothing over 3/4-inch. For March and April, we have only received 2.5in total. For our area, the average for these two months is 3.21in. We are still above average for the year, thanks to the good rains in Jan. and Feb (7.56in total). I'm hoping we can get another inch or so of rainfall in the next week or two to keep things growing.

I love this thread. On the quail waterer and feeder to keep the coons out you could try to put up chicken wire on the bottom or another hog panel but stagger it to close the gap. You would also have to go all the way to the roof so they don't just climb over.

if protein will be so limited in when they can eat it, you won't notice any antler increase

Leave it open all day and turn it off at night.

We cannot afford to let them eat that much. We have the feeders programmed so that they eat around 800lbs from each feeder a month instead of 1,000lbs+ from each feeder a month. Also, they have cottonseed available at all times, so I think they will be just fine. The biggest improvement we will see in antlers will be once others start shooting does and actually help us keep the numbers down. Once we get others to help us get the numbers down, we can then open up the feeders more. We just have too many mouths to feed right now and not enough $$ to feed them all.

Looking at the damage to your solar panel, I have three questions because I have the same feeder from Krivoman

Do you have a camera on it? Curious if you have a majority of bucks at the feeder like mine.

Also, are the coons jumping up or climbing the legs and swinging over? I have pvc on mine and no coon photos for me.

Last, turkeys pick up any of the protein? Just curious. Mine won't get in my cattle panel pen.

Clay aka BP

Yes, the majority of deer that come to this feeder are bucks.

The raccoons are climbing the legs and making it over to the tubes. We just reinforced the solar panel wiring with outdoor conduit. This stuff is really strong and tough.

Our turkeys have no problem getting inside the pens. We cut out 2 fawn gaps in each feeder and the turkeys either walk through the fawn gaps or just fly over. Our feeder pens are also very big - around 16 panels at each feeder.

Yes, there is definitely some growth where they mulched. I took some pictures when I was out there on March 10th:
There's definitely a lot more growth out there now, but I wasn't able to take pictures this past trip. I did walk it and when I removed some of the mulch the dirt underneath was nice and damp so it's definitely doing it's job. I'll take some more detailed pictures of this the next time I'm out here and let you know how it's looking.

Here are a couple of better pictures of two mulched clearings that were taken this weekend. As you can see, they stuff is really growing well in these mulched areas. These were mulched earlier this year.

No, we didn't seed them. I talked to two different seed companies and they both said that I would have been wasting time and money. Plus the fact that we have a lot of cows out there right now so even if it did start to grow, they would have mowed it down. Next time I'm out there im gonna take some more detailed pictures of the soil underneath the mulch and compare it to the soil without mulch. I'll also take soil temps as well. Those are two lanes from one of our gun blinds. We will probably corn these clearings heavy in the fall.

Well, the weathermen have been way off this week. It was showing 90% chance for the past two days and it looks like we aren't gonna get a drop. We are very dry. We've only received 1.5in from the beginning of April. I sure hope it rains tonight.

Well, we ended up getting 0.15" on 5/17, 1.0" on 5/20 and 0.8" on 5/21. They were definitely not pond filling storms but we'll take what we can get. I hope we can get one strong storm that produces 2.0"+ before we get to June.

Well, we ended up getting 0.15" on 5/17, 1.0" on 5/20 and 0.8" on 5/21. They were definitely not pond filling storms but we'll take what we can get. I hope we can get one strong storm that produces 2.0"+ before we get to June.

May need to shread those roads 1-2 times a year to prevent any unwanted trees from growing if you want to keep the sendero/lane

The main reason we cut the lanes was to allow more rain and sun to hit the ground and allow better forage to grow. We removed blueberry junipers, so they won't resprout like redberry cedars will. We plan on removing strips of cedars like this every other year or so to help improve the habitat over time. You are correct that There may be a time where we need to use the shredder.

Recently, someone asked me what my dream was. I didn't have much of answer then but I think I just read it.

Looks like a great place, with a ton of memories to be made.

Good luck - looking forward to seeing more with time.

Thanks for the kind words! We all really enjoy it. My favorite thing is to watch the deer get bigger/healthier and doing things to improve the land for our deer herd. It's definitely a marathon and takes a long time to see the actual improvements. The biggest challenge we've had is getting others on board to shoot does and help get the numbers down. We still have way too many deer and I'm praying we don't have a drought bc we will be in real trouble due to the high deer numbers.

We topped all of the feeders off this weekend. We adjusted our two timed protein feeders from being open 50 minutes in the morning and afternoon to 25 minutes in the morning and afternoon. At 50 minute feeding intervals, they were still eating nearly 1,200lbs every 3 weeks. Trying to get our 1,500lbs feeder to last around 40-45 days. All three of the Krivoman corn feeders are filled to the top and set to go off for 5 seconds each feeding. Each corn feeder has the eliminator spinner plate, so it really only throws corn for 3 seconds. At this setting, each Corn feeder should last around 3.5 months.

We didn't get any measurable rainfall last night. Everything built just to the east of us. I really hope we get some rain this week. It's gonna dry out quickly once we get in the high 90's. Going to get another load of cottonseed in late June and top off the protein feeders again.

Everything said that we were supposed to get around 1 to 2 inches over the past 7 days. We received 1/4-inch for the entire week. We went from having a wet year from janurary through March to now a drier year due to the lack of rainfall from April and May. We still haven't received a rainfall over an inch since February. We are now 3-inches below the yearly average. Hoping for a wet June and July but I'm not going to hold my breath.

We went out to fill the protein feeders as well as put out 1,000lbs of cottonseed. Previously, we set the protein feeders to feed from 6:30am to 7am and 7pm to 7:30pm, which has lowered the consumption to around 1,300lbs in 45 days. Before, they were draining 1,000lbs in 3 to 4 weeks. We have cottonseed and corn out there for the deer to eat at anytime. I changed the times on the protein feeders so they now open at 6am and close at 6:30am and open at 8:15pm and close at 8:45pm.

It's still very dry out there. Fortunately, we did get a little over 3/4in on Saturday, which puts us 10.80in. for the year. The last time we got over an inch of rain was in February. Everything since February has mostly been around 1/2in or less, which won't even touch the ground in areas with a lot of cedars.

I set up all of our trail cameras this weekend so I'm hoping to have some good pictures to post in a couple of weeks.

I gathered soil samples from three of our fall food plot locations. I'm going to send them to Texas A&M and have them tell me what type of fertilizer we need for each field.

Here are some pictures from this weekend:

Runoff from the rain.

Growth after cedar mulching lanes 4 months ago.

1,300lb Timed Krivoman feeder.

Possible elbon rye fall food plot location?

My 4-yr old son had a lot of fun fishing this weekend

Bow Blind we've been working on. It's going to be a big one. I finished framing the windows - 17" tall by 10" wide. Need to frame a door then start attaching the SmartSide panels. This thing should be really nice and roomy once we are finished!

I'm going to put this in the back of the polaris ranger and start spraying any and all yucca's and mesquites that are growing in our fall food plots. I'm also going to find an attachment that will help spray our fields around the end of August so our disk can do a little better job cutting the areas with thick grass.